Some unscrupulous persons (perhaps retired KESC personnel) have started a new racket to extort money from innocent consumers. A woman calls and talks for five minutes, politely advising you what to do if any KESC staff is harassing you or if you are having more than the scheduled outages of one hour thrice daily. Finally, she asks you to provide her with your consumer number and meter number and your address. If you're stupid enough to provide this information, the next day some official-looking people will visit you and inform you that you have tampered your meter to show only a third of the actual consumption, and if you want to avoid being arrested and have your supply disconnected, you should pay twenty-five thousand rupees immediately.

The panicked consumer has no choice but to comply, not because he has indulged in electricity theft but because the prospect of having his electricity disconnected is unbearable. KESC should do something about this scam immediately. Those who receive such calls and have Caller Line Identification should also inform the utility company of the calling number so that the culprits can be traced and punished.